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[MM] Poor in terms of supported formats? What format were you decoding from / encoding to?

[AB] formats and standards including ASIO, VST, DirectX, and ReWire.

> MP3 cannot be edited properly

[MM] What problem did you face? Again, I have used Audacity to edit mp3 files without issues.

> Cannot be converted into MP3 properly

[MM] I usually do my editing on wav files, and use lame separately to encode to mp3. I know audacity can be set up to use lame directly.

[AB] problem regarding transparent sample rate conversions of files from a wide array of sources and deliver them in the audio format including Windows PCM (WAV), OGG, AIFF, MP3, and WMA with customizable dither settings whether converting material to 44.1kHz, 48kHz, or 96kHz for CD, video, or DVD to get great-sounding results

> Conforming process frequently crashes

[MM] What is a conforming process? I have been using Audacity for several years now, and cannot recall a crash.

> Unsafe rendering

[MM] What does unsafe rendering mean?

[AB] no convenient batch processing feature to convert large numbers of files that have different formats, sample rates, and bit depths to one common format, or to apply scripts to multiple files

crashed many times while problems regarding rendering realtime, while overlaid ( not punched ) numerous sub-takes and saving multiple audio files faster with simply specifying the file format, location, filename template, and more, and these parameters to be applied to each file in the batch synchronization between audio and video playback over projects of any length

[MM] What is recording in full duplex? Playback during recording? What “improper” behaviour did you observe? In any case, for archival quality recording, you want to leave the processor as lightly loaded as possible. When I feel really uptight about this, I switch to single user mode (telinit 1) and do my recording using arecord, and edit later using Audacity.

> Dubbing facility is not available

[MM] Did you mean adding an audio track to a video recording? AFAIK, Audacity does not have a video component, so yes, I agree that’s not available. But why would you use an audio editor to do dubbing? Or maybe I am misunderstanding the problem.

[AB] problems regarding,

- display video while scrub, keyframe view, and edit sound automation in it, match up audio with the action onscreen.

- editing the soundtracks for videos

- Stretch effects or dialog to fit a video clip by simply dragging the edge of the clip in Multitrack View

- synchronization between your audio and video playback over projects of any length

- editing soundtracks for video and then export the enhanced video in AVI, MPEG, DV, or WMV format

- digitally extract tracks from audio CDs to hard drive for project use

- Seeing level meters that are in use for the master track as well as for multiple input devices, and for multiple output devices

- listening audio inputs through the software, including effects applied to the input track, then modify parameters after recording, if desired

- quickly fixing recording errors by punching in corrections on-the-fly as you rerecord, Toggle the record button to punch in new take only where to replace the old one. Punch in and out as many times as you want

First, let me thank all my friends and colleagues in the FOSS community for coming out so strongly in support to my call for help on this matter. You guys rock!

Yesterday evening there was a mail from Dr Mandar Mitra (of ISI, Kolkata and IOTA Board member), wherein he posted counter arguments to Shri Anindya Banerji’s (the multimedia expert whose comments on inadequacy of FOSS tools for CBT development lead to this series of posts). Dr Mitra also asked from Mr. Banerji to clarify further on his comments.

This is with reference to the problems outlined by Shri Anindya Banerjee. I have first-hand experience only with Audacity and I found the list of problems very imprecise (details below). Perhaps Shri Banerjee could further clarify what he meant?

I think your suggestion that a small CBT be prepared as a proof of concept by competent and interested persons is an excellent one. If such a CBT can
be put together, that will be the best possible refutation of complaints about the capabilities of open source tools. If it cannot be done within a reasonable time frame, then we must decide whether the CBT itself is more important for IOTA than the means by which it is created.

Mandar.

—————————————————————————

> Audacity (as a substitute
> of Audition)
>
> Codecs are very poor

Poor in terms of supported formats? Audio quality of encoded file? What format were you decoding from / encoding to?

> Conforming process frequently crashes

What is a conforming process? I have been using Audacity for several years now, and cannot recall a crash.

> MP3 cannot be edited properly

What problem did you face? Again, I have used Audacity to edit mp3 files without issues.

> Unsafe rendering

What does unsafe rendering mean?

> Cannot be converted into MP3 properly

I usually do my editing on wav files, and use lame separately to encode to mp3. I know audacity can be set up to use lame directly.

> Too few tools to operate

What tools were you looking for that you did not find?

> Recording in full duplex cannot done properly

What is recording in full duplex? Playback during recording? What “improper” behaviour did you observe? In any case, for archival quality recording, you want to leave the processor as lightly loaded as possible. When I feel really uptight about this, I switch to single user mode (telinit 1) and do my recording using arecord, and edit later using Audacity.

> Dubbing facility is not available

Did you mean adding an audio track to a video recording? AFAIK, Audacity does not have a video component, so yes, I agree that’s not available. But
why would you use an audio editor to do dubbing? Or maybe I am misunderstanding the problem.

A multimedia expert was asked to create a feasibility plan for development of the CBT using FOSS tools, and his report is as follows. I figured it would be interesting reading for a lot of people, so I’ve shared it below.

=== THE REPORT ===

I have gone through the most recommended open source software in Linux, to be used as substitutes of the commonly known graphics related software. On basis of the requirement for CBT development project, I have performed dry-run of some test cases. The results from those trials can be stated below.

GIMP (as a substitute of Photoshop)

- No option for true resembling of bi-cubic to bilinear conversion

- Many of the layer comp option cannot be found

- Antialising is poor

- Many of the color correction tools are absent

- Cannot share GIMP comp with INKSCAPE comp and UIRA comp layer wise

- Smart object facility is not available

(There are several other problems are there in GIMP, but those are not mentioned here, only some of the points very much linked with the work procedure of CBT development are mentioned here)

The background : IOTA is planning to recruit on contractual basis 2 multimedia developer and 1 project consultant for CBT development. The CBTs are intended for schools across the state.

The case that was : Until 18th Feb, 2010, the advertisement asked for people with work experience on *entirely* proprietary software - Adobe Flash, AfterEffects, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, 3D Studio Max. You can see a copy of that ad here below:

The Change : On 19th February evening, a meeting was convened at IT Department under the chairman-ship of the MIC IT, Prof Debesh Das. Clear guidelines were laid out. The minister re-iterated that IOTA can not do such as thing while it has the mandate to take the message of FOSS across the state. A committee sat down on the 20th Feb, afternoon at IOTA office, went through the use-case scenarios around the CBTs to be developed and identified the potential software stack to be used in the changed scenario. The updated advertisement, which is entirely pro-FOSS can be seen here

I had borrowed my friend John Bose’s expensive new toy, the Sony Handycam HDR-XR500E to record Devdas “f3ew” Bhagat’s lecture at WBSU (Barasat) on the 26th of December, 2009.

The specs of the device was *nice* - 1080i, 120GB HDD, 5.1 Dolby recording etc. It was a last minute arrangement. I didn’t like this! There was no time to tinker and see if the device was compatible with Linux and Kino for post-recording stuff.

It was set for 1080HD AVCHD or Advanced Video Codec High Definition. The camcorder was easy enough to handle. Most of the controls being easily accessible via the touchscreen. After coming back home that night, I was eager to see the results. So, with some trepidation I decided to plug in the mini-USB cable (that had came with my trusty old Canon PowerShot A610) into the mini-USB slot on the side of the HDR XR-500E.

Immediately the standard tail -f /var/log/messages routine threw up the following details:

Sweet!!! Camcorder’s being correctly auto-detected with it’s 120GB HDD storage being propering mounted and being made accessible. Going by the AVCHD file / directory structure, using Dolphin, I browsed to the STREAM folder and found the video recordings from the day, present in MTS format. The files opened nicely using the VideoLAN client (vlc) on Linux, except for the some spots of interlace combing (for an example, see this link). Oh well! we *are* working with 1080i here.

Right now, I’m using Kino 1.3.3 to import the .MTS file by converting them to raw DV files needed by Kino for its own workflow. So far, FFMpeg seems to be working nicely.

What : A lecture by Devdas (f3ew) Bhagat, who will be passing through town and was coaxed into giving this talk.

Where : Dept of Physics, West Bengal State University, Berunanpukuria, Barasat.

When : At 12:30 PM on Saturday, 26th December 2009.

Lecture Synopsis - “Most people who end up being system administrators are self taught. There is little formal theory in this field so far. System administration also involves very different sets of tasks, ranging from helpdesk issues to management reports, from wiring to software.

A very large number of people also start off with small numbers of machines to run and few issues to troubleshoot. As the number of machines grows, keeping pace with troubleshooting becomes impossible. Sysadmins spend time firefighting, and then burn out. Hiring is often very limited due to budgetary constraints or simply due to lack of available labour.

This talk deals with the constraints sysadmins work under, and how to work around them so that they aren’t as big a bottleneck. We take a look at the mindset required to do this work, and how to convince management that the solutions you are implementing are cheaper than the alternative. We also take a quick look at some of the solutions available for sysadmins to reduce their workload.”

Speaker Bio

Devdas Bhagat is just another recovering sysadmin, and is currently playing database administrator for a large domain registration system. In his copious spare time, he works with other business units at his workplace to help tune their systems, add business benchmarks and other general monitoring stuff. He has spoken at the sysadmin miniconf at LCA’09 (Linux Conference Australia) on system automation and on DNS benchmarking. He has spoken at various network operator group (SANOG) conferences on spam control, DNS, operational issues, large scale email systems, etc. He has also been a speaker on databases at FOSS.IN and it’s previous avatar, Linux-Bangalore. When not busy working with computers, he spends time in the hills trekking and photographing.

Organised by : West Bengal University of Technology in association with Kolkata Linux Users’ Group (ILUG-CAL.ORG)

The Bengal Engineering and Science University (BESU), the erstwhile BE College, Shibpur, is a venerable institution of higher learning in the country. Unfortunately, of late, it has frequently been in the news, for reason that had little to do with its glorious past of academic excellence. So, when after a large-ish gap, the students there tried to organise their techfest - Instruo ‘09 on 11 - 12 April, efforts were made to support their effort at the climb-back.

Prof Suryasarathi Barat, Director of the BESU’s School of IT (PDSIT), had requested me if I could help them scout for “big speakers”. I did know of one “big speaker” and therefore got in touch with Atul Chitnis (Toolz). With everything in place, suddenly there was the sad news of Toolz’s dad passing away and he having to rush to his mom’s side in Germany. With like 4 days to the Techfest, things could have gone into a tailspin, except that Toolz asked me to talk to Kishore Bhargava (BigBeard).

Kishore was available to speak on the 12th. He was also a great sport, as Kabir (his son) was going to give a recital later that evening which BigBeard didn’t want to miss. He landed up on 11th evening from Delhi. The next day (12th) we landed up around 11:00 AM. Kishore was already there. He’s talk was just before the lunch. Even though the awareness about FOSS in the student community was really low (when asked about having heard of FOSS, only 4 hands had gone up in a room with over 70 students). This is a bit strange as the professors keep insisting that they “have linux in all our labs“. There is some serious disconnect here.

Kishore’s talk was as always - lively. He drew in both the students and teachers, and made the session highly interactive. I tried to record his talk on my E71. The video is here, split up into 5 parts since youtube no longer allows for videos longer than 10 mins to be normally uploaded.

Part 1 of 5

Part 2 of 5

Part 3 of 5

Part 4 of 5

Part 5 of 5

Kishore’s presentation is here. It is under Creative Commons. BY-NC attribution. And if you use it somewhere please send nice “Thank You” to BigBeard

Kishore finished up with inviting students and faculty members to attend this year’s FOSS.IN at NIMHANS. He then took in a series of questions from both students and the professors. The “Top Ramen” guy (Gaurav) seemed to have a lot of questions. One of the resonating queries was “On Windows we have .NET / VC++ to program with, what do we use to do GUI programming on Linux, there are so many choices PyGTK, Qt, Glade and many more?”. Apparently “C-H-O-I-C-E” is something neither the students nor the teachers here are very comfortable with. There is a deep sense of unwillingness to leave aside the cacoon of “imagined comfort of the known“.

We all walked down for lunch at the BESU guest house. There we met with the new Vice Chancellor - Prof Ajoy K Ray. He was very open and has invited us back at BESU for future programs and activities. With a pragmatic view about things, and a willingness to listen to others, it seems that Prof Ray is trying to bring in a new drive and energy about the place. BESU needs it badly.

I’ve been a off-and-on reader of Packt Publishing, choosing to go for their e-book format over the more expensive hard copy editions. Typically they would allow me to login into my account and download the PDF based e-book which would be password protected. Today I received an email from them, which I’m putting up here in part:

In December, we decided to enable the copy and paste feature on our eBooks. Following this announcement, we received a number of suggestions from customers who would like to see the password protection removed from our eBooks as well. With the increasing popularity of reading eBooks on portable devices, the password protection was proving to be an obstacle that prevented users from doing so.

Therefore, we have taken this feedback on board and decided to remove all password protection from our eBooks with immediate effect. If you own a Packt eBook, you can download it again from your account at www.PacktPub.com; this new copy will have no password protection. We would like to thank all customers who took the time to provide us with this feedback and we hope you are pleased with this outcome.

The move IMHO shares a lot of similarity to the recent Red Hat & Microsoft interoperability deal on virtualization. It seems that for the smarter players the demands from consumers are getting to shape DRM policies in publishing. Kudos to Packt! I’m definitely buying more from you